It’s PLEDGE DRIVE time again! If you’re a fan of this blog, please help fund its continued existence by clicking the button below. THANKS!
By David Futrelle
Right-wingers are positively obsessed with lesbian kisses these days. Yesterday I wrote about One Angry Gamer’s meltdown over a fleeting, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it same-sex kiss in the latest Star Wars movie. Meanwhile, over on The Federalist, Lutheran pastor and YouTube personality Hans Fiene is losing it over a cutesy TV commercial running on the Hallmark Channel featuring two lesbians getting hitched. Naturally, it ends with a kiss. A LESBIAN KISS.
The basic thesis of Fiene’s rambling rant, as he warns darkly in the title of his post, is that “Lesbian Ads On The Hallmark Channel Are Just The Beginning.”
The ad in question, for wedding planning site Zola.com, was originally pulled from the channel in response to protests from the unconvincingly named One Million Moms, a front group for SPLC-designated hate group the American Family Association. When this caused an even bigger protest from LGBTQ groups, Hallmark Channel executives reinstated the ad.
This, Fiene insists, is a Really Big Deal:
[E]asy as it is to cry “baby” and “bigot” at those who don’t want gay weddings lauded during commercial breaks, the truth is, like most bursts of the culture wars, this specific battle wasn’t really about the outward issue. The problem for many Christians is not so much the ad itself but what the ad represents.
And what it represents, he says, is an incursion by godless lady sodomites into the holy Christian sanctuary that is the Hallmark Channel.
You may object that the Hallmark Channel is not actually a holy Christian sanctuary at all, but a commercial cable network started by a greeting-card company. Fiene acknowledges this, declaring that
In a theological sense, the Hallmark Channel is not a Christian broadcasting network.
And its movies — even the ones about Christmas — aren’t really Christian because, among other things,
The characters rarely, if ever, pray or worship. The plots never revolve around the heroine saving a church or reading Luke’s nativity account to the flannel-clad, hunky widower’s precocious daughter.
But, he insists,
culturally speaking, Hallmark Christmas movies are noticeably Christian. The characters don’t take off their clothes, murder anyone, or use profanity.
Ah yes. Very distinct from all those other religions that celebrate naked, potty-mouthed murderers.
In any case, Fiene is convinced that the Hallmark Channel is the last refuge for harried Christian moms who just want to watch wholesome entertainment with their innocent children without having to explain lesbians to them.
[W]hen an ad featuring a lesbian couple airs during a commercial break on the Hallmark Channel, it doesn’t upset you because your fragile little Christian heart can’t handle the image of two women in wedding dresses. It upsets you because the ad indicates that the secular left, led by the LGBT mafia, have discovered your last remaining hideout, planted their flag in the ground, and claimed it as their own.
As Fiene sees it, the evil LGBT mafia has taken over all the other channels on TV, leaving helpless Christian parents terrified to let their kids “near a Thursday evening sitcom for fear they’ll contract HPV via satellite dish.”
But the evil LGBT army won’t be satisfied with merely infecting kids with STIs from space. They want MORE
The same LGBT movement that claimed almost every network and film series you and your children once watched has now claimed virtually every institution in your daily life.
You worry the local public school will indoctrinate your kids. You worry your daughter will lose her shot at a scholarship because the LGBT mobs have bullied the school board into allowing males identifying as females on women’s athletic teams. You’re no longer welcome at your LGBT-compliant local library if you don’t want sexual deviants dancing in front of your children.
That last bit is a reference to Drag Queen Story Hour, a popular attraction at many libraries around the country in which, um, drag queens read stories to kids. It is not, as far as I know, mandatory. Yet.
Now that even the Hallmark Channel has fallen, can Christmas itself remain untainted by the LGBT menace?
“The LGBT Mob Won’t Stop at Hallmark,” Fiene warns, declaring that said mob
probably won’t be content to take away every metaphorical sanctuary we have and then stop short of seizing our literal ones. If they wouldn’t let us celebrate cheesy Hallmark Christmas without celebrating their sin, they won’t let us celebrate actual Jesus Christmas that way either.
I’m not sure that even Fiene knows what he means by that last bit. How exactly would one go about lesbifying Christmas? Does Fiene imagine that all Christian Americans will be required by law to give each other sensible shoes for Christmas to appease the lesbian overlordsladies? That they’ll have to throw out all their Christmas music and replace it with Ani DiFranco and the Indigo Girls? That the Christmas carol “O Little Town of Bethlehem” be replaced by “O Little Town of Northampton?” That It’s a Wonderful Life will be banned and everyone forced to binge-watch Orange is the New Black instead? That Joseph and Mary will be replaced by Josephine and Mary?
I dunno. I think a lesbified Christmas might be sort of fun.
I, For one, welcome our new lesbian overladies.
The group “A million Moms” also threw a fit over the ad as well
Admittedly the Directors Cut of Miracle on 34th Street was a bit of a shock.
I think that would really work. Stealing!
JimCall me cynical, but I think Zola sold the commercial to Hallmark because they hoped there would be a backlash followed by a counter backlash, resulting in far more views than a commercial airing on a basic cable channel would typically receive.
Anyway, I always hate the “think of the poor, traumatized children” excuse for bigotry. Children are not born homophobic and adults need to stop projecting their own homophobia onto kids. When I was growing up, my across the street neighbours* were a lesbian couple and because I was friends with their daughter and neices, I spent quite a bit of time at their house. I was not the slightest bit traumatized. Because my parents did not care and nobody in the neighborhood treated them differently. Until about middle school age, I had no idea there was even any reason people might not view their family as normal.
Of course, bigots know this and that’s what they’re really afraid of. Not that children will be upset by LGBTQ people, but that they won’t be. In order to uphold patriarchy and white supremacy, they need those kids to grow up scared of anyone not white and cishet. They can fuck right off.
Sorry. For some reason the Red Bull I drank made me ranty.
* For some reason auto correct changed it to the British spelling. So I’m just going with it.
I haven’t exactly read the Bible backwards and forwards but I don’t recall it saying anywhere that you can’t use profanity. Like, you can make a good case against “Goddammit,” but “shit” should be fine, morally speaking
That advert was rubbish. We need better lesbian adverts, dammit.
BTW did anyone see Jenny Hagel’s pitches for lesbian Hallmark movies? I would legit watch all of them
“A Million Moms,” huh? I guess none of those moms were married to other moms.
Usually the right wing outrage machine gets the most upset about gay men, so it’s interesting that they’ve changed targets to lesbians. Though of course they had to throw in some transphobia. I wonder if their heads would explode if they realized that there are gay trans* people as well.
Regarding music and lesbian Christmas, as someone who finds it tiring to hear the same Christmas music every year on the radio for months, I’d much rather hear some of the lesbian artists mentioned above. Anyone want to put together a lesbian Christmas playlist?
@WWTH
Whenever some right winger says to think of the children with regards to LGBTQIPA+ issues, my mind immediately jumps to LGBTQIPA+ kids and that I care very much about children of all sexualities and genders feeling accepted and supported. Seeing lesbians and trans* people and drag queen story hour (it exists in my area but since I don’t have children I haven’t seen it, so I don’t know much about it) doesn’t harm children, it teaches them to accept all people, which would be a value I want children to learn.
@Amy E
I’d watch any of those movies. Especially the ones about Sue.
Sorry if I’m rambling, I’m kind of tired right now and am just typing out a jumbled stream of my thoughts.
Turns out “One Million Moms” is, in reality “One Mom with backing from the AFA*”
*American Family Association, a prominent anti-LGBTQ propaganda mill
Huh. I actually know Hans Fiene personally.
Well, sort of. He was a long-time member of a small Internet community I also frequented. This was a while ago – like the early ’10s – but I remember him well; I used to talk politics with him on the forum. He was always on the conservative side, but he was nonetheless pretty sharp and good at defending his ideas in a group that otherwise leaned to the left.
Anyway, I was happy for him when he got the gig at the Federalist, but I haven’t interacted with him, or read his work, in years. I’m a bit surprised to see this; he always struck me as more of a “Beltway” conservative than a culture warrior.
@Dalillama
So, an AstroTurf job?
I have a suspicion, with some evidence, that a number of TERF groups are conservative AstroTurf jobs. Specifically, I was able to track down proof that one prominent TERF group (Women’s Liberation Front) was directly funded by American conservative groups.
@Aaron
He doesn’t appear to have this point well-defended, seeing as this could be politely called “fecal matter of the male cattle.”
@Aaron
Have you considered the possibility that you’re just very bad at critical analysis or smelling rank bullshit when it’s rubbed in your face? I don’t say this out of malice, but out of charity: the other possible reason you might say something like this is massive unexamined bigotry.
@Dalillama:
I don’t think I’m stupid, no, nor do I think I have “massive unexamined bigotry.” But then, that’s just my opinion, and I suppose I’m biased. Others can come to their own conclusions.
I’m not really interested in engaging with whatever it is you’re trying to start here, so let’s leave it at that.
@wwth
Sadly it’s not just white people I’ve known who are homophobic. I also used to be someone like them but I’m not sure if I went around quoting Leviticus to people (I probably didn’t – I haven’t really read the Bible much even when I was a more committed Catholic). My immediate relatives are (mostly those older than myself) – I’m not sure if they’ve ever cited the Bible, but it did seem like a knee-jerk reaction or something, and because they are all quite religious.
I believe there are a number of factors that motivate homophobia – simple disgust, conflation with pedophilia, a belief that sex should not be used for anything but procreation (in case the alternatives lead to depravity or something like pedophilia and rape) and fundamentalist interpretations of religious text and doctrines.
Unfortunately, and tangentially, I’ve come across someone who purpoted that Iran was “free” simply because it let people kill gays and lock those up who engaged in extramarital sex – he cited that people would consider it disgusting to allow homosexuality, when there’s plenty of straight men who get off to lesbian porn and when I’ve come across someone on Tumblr who reblogged a complaint about straight women who fetishize MLM relationships. Iranians seem free to do one thing and that’s hate. They also said North Korea was “free” when it’s simply a fucking concentration camp cult – the way they finish applauding is VERY unnatural.
I don’t know how the hell people are gonna be convinced. There’s also those who are adamant abotu gender roles too, like many people who argue against same sex marriage (e.g. Dave Cullen AKA Computing Forever, someone who is adamant about having strict gender roles take place in society and someone who cited only Walt Heyer, a religious fundie-supported fuckhead, and the Reimer case for why being trans is a “disorder”) – I guess this is why I feel like we should get rid of gender, so sexism and homophobia would probably go away a lot easier.
@ Aaron
What are you doing, man? It’s okay to be bad at critical analysis or have unexamined assumptions. Everybody’s learning. In particular, a lot of liberal-leaning people have been shocked and bewildered by how far down the reactionary rabbit hole their supposedly reasonable conservative friends have turned out to be, including in governments where they ostensibly should know better. You don’t have to be “stupid” to be bad at this stuff.
My earliest encounters with libertarians were over 10 years ago and I had no clue how to deal with their arguments. Then over the years, I learned. Now I share memes about how libertarians are all thinly closeted pedophiles. There were a lot of eloquent right-wingers on the internet, and it could be hard to smell the bullshit when I didn’t have the context to see that all their arguments were hanging on a flimsy foundation of bigotry. In reality, they’re no different from the classical liberal thinkers whose arguments were primarily for the purpose of justifying colonialism. The real function of these arguments isn’t actually to strengthen their position, but to get you to agree with their framing of the issues (and, occasionally, bald-faced lies) and make you justify why it would or should be any other way.
I saw someone just today asking what the deal was with the J.K. Rowling controversy. It all seemed reasonable because he held the mistaken belief, shared by many who never actually had to examine it, that gender is a hard binary according to SCIENCE. One big lesson here, I think, is that journalists have to be so much better about how they cover things like this. They really shouldn’t simply be characterizing the situation as a spat. They should be pointing out that the gender binary argument is flat-out wrong.
@An Impish Pepper
This happened to me. An acquaintance of mine seemed to be reasonable upon the first few times I met him. Then he progressively revealed how disconnected he was from reality, to a creepy degree. He was shockingly racist and homophobic and seemed to be a 9/11 conspiracy theorist. And to think that at first glance he seemed fine.
In my experience, anyone in the present day who calls themself a “classical liberal” is a conservative who won’t admit it.
In an ideal world they would point that out. However, it seems unlikely that a journalist, even a liberal one, would say this in a news publication because even a lot of liberal people don’t fully understand trans* issues enough to comment. Also, a lot of otherwise liberal people are surprisingly ignorant or even bigoted on these issues.
I don’t know where this laser brain gets his delusions, but the Daughters of Bilitis was the beginning.
I did some recreational gloating on a yahoo thread devoted to this story. It was fun, especially the way all the bigoted asshats were whining that no-one loves them anymore.
I truly despise Hallmark movies, but I might watch the channel for the commercials.
@An Impish Pepper
What are you doing, man? It’s okay to be bad at critical analysis or have unexamined assumptions.
Of course it’s okay to be bad at critical analysis; I just don’t really think I am. I’m not perfect, of course, or even particularly great. But bad? I don’t think so. You are, of course, free to read my various comments on this site and agree or disagree.
I absolutely have unexamined assumptions – as do we all – and I’m always working to be better in that regard. But that’s not what I feel was being suggested. Frankly, I feel like Dalillama was obviously just trying to start shit, and I didn’t really want to take the bait.
(As for Hans in particular: again, I said I was a bit surprised at this article, not that I was flabbergasted. He was always a conservative, but he came across as more of what we might call a “Susan Collins Republican” when I knew him. Based on his recent work at the Federalist, it seems to me that he’s moved a bit to the right. Or possibly I did misread him back in the day – I’ll have to think on it. It’s not self-evident, to me, though.)
I mean, considering the actual Susan Collins is standing lock-step with the Trump regime, like all the other Republican politicians, I guess what I’m saying is maybe they had pretty much the same tangible views all along, and some were just better at sounding palatable to more people than others were. If you look back and compare the actual core assumptions made by conservatives, they tend to be pretty much the same. It’s been a running theme on this blog, even, despite it focusing mostly on the “manosphere” collection of ideologies.
@Alan
Is that the one where we learn that 34th intersected Elm right next to where Freddy Krueger married Santa, with the whole alternative explanation for the “Claws” family name?
@An Impish Pepper
I think this is true. The views that make up the alt right and that Trump supporter hold were there all along, some politicians were better at hiding their agendas.
But Susan Collins apparently votes with Trump something like 65% of the time, which is not lockstep.
She’s supported Trump in some high-profile cases (basically Kavanaugh and some health care legislation) for which she deserves plenty of criticism. But her aggregate voting record is tangibly different from that of more conservative Republicans; they are not, in fact, all the same.
@Aaron:
Yeah, but what would be interesting would be seeing things like how often she votes against judicial nominations or how often she votes against Trump on X other issue.
There are TONS of useless votes. There are also tons of votes where the outcome is clearly decided. In those cases it is actually common to coordinate with your party whip so that representatives from swing districts and senators from swing states can lodge a “no” vote while knowing full well the bill is going to pass.
I’d be interested in seeing how many times she voted against Trump when the votes for Trump’s position were between 48 and 52.
If you never vote against Trump when it matters, then those other votes – the 35% – don’t make you any different from the most extreme right wing asshat.
On top of that, there’s the plain fact that she caucuses with the Republicans. The Senate Majority Leader has immense power to simply not bring things up for a vote if it would put Collins or other swing-Senators in an awkward position. When she votes for McConnell, that is the single most consequential vote she makes for the next two years – nothing else, not even a SCOTUS confirmation, is more consequential. You can see this from the fact that McConnell’s office guaranteed that no serious investigation of Kavanaugh’s conduct ever occurred. A Dem as majority leader would have resulted in a delay and a serious investigation.
If Collins votes for McConnell, she’s every bit as responsible for the extreme outcomes in the Senate as the most rabid right-winger.
Now, is she actually a rabid right winger? Very possibly not. I don’t know her, but the media reports certainly don’t portray her that way.
But since the outcome is the same, her state of mind doesn’t matter fuck all. Given these realities, Collins is functionally the same as those rabid asshats, regardless of what she hides deep in the most existentially transcendent corners of her cardiac musculature.
My close, dear lesbian friend recently purchased a letter from a hallmark store that was specifically a woman to woman love letter. She was smiling for days after she mailed it off, it was the sweetest thing and it warmed my own lesbian heart.
It was one of maybe a few lgbtq cards in the store out of the thousands portraying straight relationships. But, yeah. We’re totally taking over the card industry. /s
Also, how do you join the LGBT mafia? Is there like some secret phrase I need to learn or something? I’m a nerd, so I don’t know these things.